HOLLOWPOINT

“No Good Deed” — Page Ten

Even as the Kairos time-bubble vanishes (along with Sophie) our hero tackles the kid out of harm’s way, taking the bullet hit himself. Fortunately, the new graphene-laminate gel armor stops the slug, though it hurts. Technically, the gel armor spreads the impact pretty well, but we’re going to assume Countdown’s gel layer is damn thin by choice, to permit better speed and mobility. (That’s a protective stance in Panel 3, by the way, not a chokehold.)

Also, the graphene laminate takes a certain amount of damage. We wanted a hard shell for fighting purposes (it will become clearer why once the armor is weaponized) and while we could have had the bullets just flatten and fall off without leaving a mark, that has the major tactical drawback of “not looking cool.” So fragments of the laminating polycarbonate resin shatter off with bullet impacts.

Real-Life Superpowers

After the discussion last week of people personally experiencing the time-dilation “Kairos Effect,” I thought I’d bring up a few more “real superpowers.” Back when I was working on X-Men Evolution we had an episode or two dealing with mutants that were basically worthless. Honestly, you’d think there would be more of these. As I recall, one kid could produce a small amount of slime from his hands (essentially a rather disgusting stigmata, I suppose) and another had butterfly wings that were not strong enough to fly with; they just looked pretty. Even as such, the Marvel mutations are really pretty big leaps; they certainly smack less of natural selection and more of “intelligent design.” Or at least Stan Lee.

In real life, the “superpowers” are often useless and/or running gags. I remember hearing a girl on the radio who could be told any word and she would instantly rattle back all the letters in that word, arranged in alphabetical order. You could say “shadow” and she would fire back “A-D-H-O-S-W” without hesitation. (A Google search shows a number of people can do this; I guess it is a mental quirk that is rare but not unheard of.) But while cool to witness, it is essentially useless; even in old-school secretarial work there wouldn’t be any use for that ability that I can think of.

When my sister Eve was a toddler, she would routinely go outside in the Spring and hold up her hand and butterflies would come down and land in her palm. It was amazing to watch. It was before the age of video, but we have any number of still photos. My father (a scientist) tried to explain that her skin reflected UV light in the same manner as flower petals, but to me that still qualifies as a superpower. She went on to work with animals and still has an terrific rapport with them, so it may have been a superpower yet.

But far more common in our family are the “funny” superpowers. For instance, my wife’s superpower is to always know when I am on the toilet and insist, at any time of the day or night, that she needs to use the bathroom immediately. If I wait until she is out of the house and then sit on the toilet, she will phone me. It has become known as “Sharon’s Superpower.”

My friend Frank rarely calls me, but whenever he does, it is always at the most inconvenient time possible. If I am standing precariously on a ladder or wiring up some sort of effects charge (or both) and the phone in my pocket rings, I don’t even have to check the Caller ID. It’ll be Frank. Given the fact that it generally causes me to step back and take a second look at what I’m doing, he may or may not be my guardian angel.

My mother’s superpower is to always, always, have her name spelled wrong on important documents. Contracts, deeds, book covers; they never get her name right. Her name is Martha, but she gets “Mabel” or “Margaret” or “Mary” or some other name not her own. She once co-authored a book with my father and the cover listed her as “Margaret.” She protested to the publisher, who felt she was making a big deal out of nothing. They also got her name wrong on Wikipedia, which upset her so much I had a friend with editing privileges go in and correct it for her. But it continues to happen. Because superpowarz.

As for me, I don’t have any superpowers that I know of, except perhaps for the ability to somehow injure myself doing small household chores. Or purchase lottery tickets that not only fail to win, but don’t even manage to get a single number right. But I’m waiting. Always waiting. I’d go up on the roof and try to fly, but I know what would happen. I’d be balanced on the edge, ready to jump, and the phone in my pocket would ring.

On a similar note, Max is trying to get me to join Twitter. I’m resisting, because if I have a definable superpower it’s my ability to get involved in various aspects of social media just in time for them to become irrelevant.

after examining it it seems to merely be a generic ‘pistol’
square trigger guard and blocky slide like a Glock, but you can see the hammer in the update from 07-12.
the magazine (seen in the update from 07-19) seems too thick to be a single stack- but too short to be a .45 mag. you can also see that it has a full length dust cover in the 07-19 update.
so I think what we’re seeing here is a 9mm double stack. still- 6 rounds of 9mm? nope.
unfortunately- that means he has 9-14 rounds left.

I have amazing predictive powers. All I have to do is honestly try to get out of someone’s way, and I will go to EXACTLY where they are trying to get to (thus getting in their way far better than I could have otherwise).

My family has crazy stupid luck. As one friend put it, ” Terrible things happen to you guys! But it turns out O.K.” . I personaly have been in swept away in rip tides, accidently set myself on fire, and taken a header down a 200 ft. shale scree slope with a 60 ft. sheer cliff at the bottom. I walked away without a scratch on all accounts. The rest of my family has been through even crazier stuff, and they all walked away from whatever it was.

So… Too late? A large fireball outside from the burning car, vs large arranged fireball rigged to the door being opened? Frankly even though the kid might be injured some, a window is looking like a really good option right now. Its only 10 feet, of course I never took a header out a window that high, but I did like dropping out of trees and jumping off shed roofs as a kid. Maybe Sophie can arrange a soft landing.

If those people have any sense, they’re hiding behind stuff as far away as possible in case the guy starts shooting out the window again until such time as they have confirmation the guy is down, and would not make it to right below the window in time to do any catching. If anyone is going to do any miraculous catching of falling people today it’s probably going to have to be Sophie.

I am imagining him diving out of the window at high speed and in some contorted position and hitting the concrete. It’s possible to do this sort of thing in a 12-inch kiddie pool, BUT the gel is a lot shallower, so… the Non-newtonian gel locks up correctly and no major bones are broken… but he has a full-body bruise from the 10g impact distributed across his entire body. Eating? Ow. Breathing? Ow. Doing anything except cautious thinking? Ow.

I’m not so sure about that outcome. I’m a bit skeptical that the armor would work quite that way under that sort of impact, but even if it does: While the bruises normal nonsuperhero people such as you and I are familiar (I’m assuming you’re not a superhero) with are merely painful and inconvenient, a sufficiently large bruise of sufficient severity can have dangerous, even life threatening complications. A whole-body bruise like our hero would have would exceed that “sufficiently” by an order of magnitude.

The rigidity of a non-newtonian fluid is transient: rigid to an impact and fluid to a static load, and the size of the mass only comes into play with really LARGE amounts.
Run on it or hit it? Rigid all the way through (if a little jello-y)
Stand on it? Immediately sink into it like a fluid. A hollow point that fragments inside the fluid will defeat it, but in a laminate that won’t happen often.
Examples:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHlAcASsf6U large poolhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ThtQkkXvdo gunfire

Just had an idea for an improvement of the armor: A full face plate of that yellow glass/plastic material. A shot in the mouth area would have been unfortunate…

When I was in school, during the last few years I could “locate” people I had been with shortly before. In a crowded place like a schoolyard. Once I lost my mom in a big shopping center and found her using the compass before she noticed. 🙂 It was like a compass needle within my head telling me the direction. For a short time it worked quite well, but you don’t need this often, and at some later time it was gone. I can still enforce the imagination of the compass, but there is no needle anymore.

Of course it was explainable: Looking in the most likely direction, getting a glimpse of hair or clothing, a hint from a mirror, all subconsciously put together to a direction info. Something like that. I should have practiced using it, but it was such a minor thing that I didn’t think of it when I didn’t need it, and then it was gone.